The curriculum standards for the state of Alabama for grades 6-12 in English Language Arts (updated in 2015) include Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking standards. If you have any questions on how I plan to meet these standards through different activities and assignments, please leave any questions in my contact box! The individual grade levels standards are linked below.
The Poetry Foundation is a great source that combines poetry, poet biographies, and other information in a single location. This source also gives us a peek at the diversity in poetry. We will be referring to the Poetry Foundation during our poetry unit during April, which is National Poetry Month.
Another resource that will help us create our own poems is ReadWriteThink's Acrostic Poems interactive tool.
Vocabulary Resources
Flocabulary is another helpful resource I will be using throughout the school year to help with teaching 8th grade vocabulary, spelling, word usage, and parts of speech.
Understanding Shakespeare Resources
While SparkNotes is not a scholarly resource that substitutes reading materials for this class, the resource "No Fear Shakespeare" will provide Shakespeare's words alongside the English we use today to help us understand what he is trying to say a little bit better. :) This might come in handy in later English classes too!
Sentence Structure Handouts
This helpful handout is courtesy of a fellow ELA educator. Use this to assist you with all writing assignments in this class and save it for future English classes too!
The ReadWriteThink Webbing Tool is a helpful tool to brainstorm or cluster ideas for writing assignments or projects digitally. Feel free to use this source in my class as well as in other classes that may require structured writing assignments.
Teaching Tools for Fellow Teachers & Parents
The following presentation provides:
A Definition of e-Books
Advantages & Disadvantages of using them
Best Practices, and
Examples of how e-books can be used in different classes and grade levels.
For more information on e-books, do not hesitate to contact me!
Teaching Tools: Pairing Art with Literature
One interesting way to teach literature is to pair it with works of art. There are numerous examples of how this can be done. If you would like to highlight a particular artistic period alongside literature, such as the British Romantics, consider searching for the artwork of William Blake on Google Arts & Culture. Google Arts & Culture can also allow you to take virtual tours of historic places, such as Shakespeare's Globe. Another ELA educator has paired literature with art to teach literary analysis. A fellow ELA educator and I have created a handout that gives a general starting point when trying to pair art with literature using carousel strategies by numbering artwork and rotating students. Use it to teach the entire lesson or use it as inspiration in developing your own!